lessons

Republicans are licking their wounds after Tuesday’s ballot box defeats. But there is a lesson to be learned here. The various elections in New York City, New Jersey and Virginia, viewed collectively, reminded us yet again of a perennial political truth: Americans still care first and foremost about their wallets.

Culture war-type issues often generate the most salacious headlines — and many of the Trump administration’s fights on these fronts, such as immigration enforcement and higher education reform, are just and necessary. Still, the economy remains the top political issue. Unless Republicans get more serious about advancing an actionable economic agenda to provide real relief to middle- and working-class Americans, the party risks losing even more ground in next year’s midterm elections.

When voters went to the polls in New York City, New Jersey and Virginia, they were often asking the simplest, most urgent questions: Can I pay the rent? Can I fill up my truck at the pump? Can I fill the fridge? Will my job still exist next year? Do I have reliable healthcare for my children? Across too many districts and communities, those answers remain uneasy. Inflation, while well down from its Biden-era peak, is still stubbornly higher than the Fed’s 2% target. Purchasing power is still eroded, and cost-of-living anxieties persist for far too many.

For Republicans, this is both a warning and an opportunity. Despite a concerted effort in recent years to rebrand as the party of the common man, including but hardly limited to Teamsters President Sean O’Brien getting a coveted speaking slot at last year’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, too many voters still associate the GOP with tax cuts for the donor class and a general indifference toward the tens of millions of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. That’s the blunt truth. The perception of corruption in some of the highest corridors of power in Washington, especially when it comes to the influence wielded by the über-wealthy emirate of Qatar, doesn’t exactly assuage voters’ concerns.

If the GOP wants to regain the public’s trust, it must present a compelling vision of what a sound conservative economic stewardship entails in the 21st century.

That redefinition begins with a renewed focus on work, dignity and resilience. The Republican Party must build an economic narrative that centers on taming inflation, boosting wages, rebuilding America’s industrial base and greater healthcare security for the paycheck-to-paycheck class. Conservatives should pursue a pragmatic economic nationalism — one that ties together trade policy, manufacturing, energy production, workforce development and family formation. All proposed economic policies must be explained in concrete, local terms. The relevant questions each and every time should be: How does this policy tangibly benefit the average American, and how can the policy be messaged so that the benefit is clearly understood?

The voters Republicans need to reach are not tuning in to wonky policy seminars. They want results: lower energy bills, affordable groceries, job security and an economy that rewards hard work. The GOP must speak directly to these priorities with honesty and humility.

If economic anxiety persists through next fall’s midterms, voters will punish whichever party appears more indifferent to their struggles. The Trump administration and Republicans across the country need to get to work fast. That means more Trump-signed executive orders, within the confines of the law, that can provide real economic relief and security to the working men and women of America. And it certainly means a concerted congressional attempt to bolster the economic prospects of the middle and working classes, perhaps through the Senate’s annual budget reconciliation process.

Inflation must finally be tamed — including the Fed raising interest rates, contra Trump’s general easy-money instincts, if need truly be. Private health savings account access must be expanded and the ease of acquiring private healthcare must finally be divorced from the particular circumstances of one’s employment. More jobs and supply chains must be reshored. Concerns about child care affordability and parental leave availability must be addressed. And even more of our bountiful domestic energy must be extracted. These are just some of the various policies that voters might reward at the ballot box next fall.

Our searing cultural battles will continue — and they matter, greatly in fact. But when a family can’t afford its groceries or gas, such debates tend to fade into the background. Republicans must rebuild trust with voters on the most fundamental issue in American politics: the promise of economic opportunity and security.

It’s always dangerous to over-extrapolate and glean clear national lessons from a few local elections. But all three of the biggest recent races — for New York City mayor and for New Jersey and Virginia governors — had final winning margins for Democrats greater than most polling suggested. That seems like a clear enough rebuke. Accordingly, the Trump administration and Republicans across the country must deliver real economic results on the real economic issues facing the American people. If they don’t present a compelling economic vision and execute that vision capably and efficiently, there likely will be even greater electoral damage next fall.

That could all but doom the remainder of the Trump presidency. And what a disappointment that would be.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer

While both Ukraine and Russia have sustained large amounts of helicopter losses due to dense traditional frontline air defenses, in some cases, drones, and attacks on bases, the U.S. Army is taking a measured approach in applying lessons learned to the future of its own rotary-wing fleet, a top commander told us. Maj. Gen. Claire Gill, commanding general of the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence is adamant that not everything that happens in Ukraine applies to the U.S. Army and it’s absolutely critical that only the right lessons should be heeded.

“When we talk about Ukraine, there are a lot of lessons to be learned,” Gill told us on the sidelines of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) annual conference in Washington, D.C.. “We focus on the right lessons to be learned.”

“There are some differences between positional warfare with drones – they’re doing World War One with drones right now in Ukraine – and the way that the United States Army fights, particularly as a member of the combined arms team and as a member of the joint force,” he added. “So, there are a lot of things that we should pay attention to there, but they’re not flying at night. They don’t plan like we plan. They don’t bring all the collective elements that we could bring to bear when we execute our operations.”

Ukraine and Russia are likely using deception as part of their operations, “but…using the night, using the terrain, using the degraded visual environment, we’ve got some pretty exquisite capabilities, and some well-trained folks, as do the Ukrainians,” Gill noted.

Gill is less convinced about Russian training.

“On the Russian side, I’ve seen some shoot downs that make me wonder, flying around the daytime, at altitude, flying the same routes. That just makes me think you can’t equate the way that they’re flying with the way that we might fly. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity there for us to learn some things, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

“This is something when I talk to young aviators about what we should take away from some of the decisions that are being made in terms of divesting aircraft out of the army and investing in [unmanned aerial systems] UAS,” Gill added. “We have to make changes, right? We have to see the world the way it is. I know we’re not done with rotorcraft like I told you. Everything that we’re flying right now is going to be on the ramp for a long time.”

Army aviation assets include UH-60 Black Hawks, CH-47 Chinooks, AH-64E Apaches and heavily modified MH-60M Black Hawk, MH-47G Chinook, and AH/MH-6R Little Bird helicopters. You can read more about the future of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment’s (SOAR) aircraft in our recent story here. In the coming decade, the Bell MV-75 Valor tilt-rotor aircraft is slated to come online as well. More on that later in this story.

The fate of helicopters in Ukraine has hammered home the need for missions to be mapped out with excrutiating detail before launching, Brig. Gen. Philip C Baker, the Army’s aviation future capabilities director, told us.

“We’ve got to have that ability to have really good planning tools going into mission sets,” Baker explained. “And planning tools is really driven by our data integration across all of our combat systems, intel, maneuver, fires. So when you look at NGC2 [Next Generation Command and Control] that provides us an integrated data path to bring in as much of information early on to planning, so our crews, both manned and unmanned, can plan them out right mission sets so they understand enemy, they understand the electronic spectrum, they understand weather, they understand all that before they go in.”

In addition, “when you look at the battlefield data and the speed of data that passes around the battlefield, we’ve got to be able to have that inside of our operation cells, and we’ve got to have that inside of our aircraft. And so we’re doing a lot this year onboarding new communication capability onto platforms that will bring into our experiment in March, that brings in satellite-based communication, that brings in mesh networks onto platforms to be able to drive that data flow onto platforms inside of our operation cells.”

Having standoff munitions capabilities is also key, Baker posited, pointing to the Army’s developing launched effects effort, a broad term that the U.S. military currently uses to refer to uncrewed aerial systems configured for different missions, like reconnaissance or acting as loitering munitions, which can be fired from other aerial platforms, as well as ones on the ground or at sea. For the Army, one example of a longer-range weapon being fielded for Army helicopters is the Israeli-designed Spike-NLOS. It gives Apaches the ability to hit moving targets far away with exacting precision. Far longer-ranged launched effects will also become available, including those that can decoy, jam, and attack targets many dozens, or even hundreds of miles away.

“The role of launched effects is to provide that standoff capability, not like a Hellfire at eight kilometers, but multiple, multiple kilometers out, so we can make contact with the enemy early, understand what the enemy is doing, and then have an effect on the enemy,” Baker suggested. “So that’s really the role of launched effects.”

New and improved sensors will also help rotary-wing aircraft survive by making them better able to operate in a degraded visual environment, Baker added.

“As we bring new sensors onto the aircraft, we want to be able to truly operate in those environments that give us the highest capability and survivability,” Baker pointed out. “So during darkness hours, during dust, during, you know, the environment where we need we can operate not in daytime. So we’re bringing on sensor capability to our platforms that allow us to even enhance our ability to operate at night.”

Asked about what the right lessons from Ukraine are, especially for a potential fight against a peer adversary like China, Baker said they are “really tied to that standoff range. We know standoff is going to be critical to be able to stay outside of weapon engagement zones so we can operate kind of a sanctuary.”

The Army also wants “to rely on that data network to be able to pass information quickly so we can strike quickly and affect the enemy,” Baker added. 

Lessons learned from Ukraine are informing how the Army is developing the Valor, Brig. Gen. David Phillips, program executive officer of aviation, told TWZ.

“I would offer, from equipment perspective and a sustainment perspective, you can look at the equipment decisions that we’re making on MV-75 and tie them directly to these lessons learned, how we integrate launch effects, how we integrate networks, how we integrate the survivability on the platform, the survivability off board the platform, and just the aircraft survivability itself. I think we’re absolutely integrating those into our design efforts today, as we’re headed toward the critical design review that’s coming up in the spring.”

With many Russian helicopters being lost from attacks on their bases, Maj. Gen. Lori Robinson, Commanding General of Army Aviation and Missile Command, said it will be important to keep an eye on the skies.

“I think the right lesson is that everyone does have to look up,” Robinson told us. “And that includes your sustainment footprint on the ground. So we’re looking into how to make that mobile. We don’t have a mound of stuff on the ground. And then every soldier out there, whether you’re in the aircraft or you’re sustaining the aircraft on the ground, is going to have to be aware of what is above them.”

When it comes to thinking about lessons learned from Ukraine, Gill said one thing stands out. While crewed rotary wing aviation will be in the mix for years to come, uncrewed systems will ultimately be at the pointy tip of the spear.

“The Army made a decision to move toward unmanned capability,” he noted. “And so I think the lesson that I take from Ukraine and this nature of warfare is you lead with unmanned systems, right? So whether you want to create an effect, whether you want to create a diversion, whether you want to find something, and then you introduce people. When you need humans to do the things that humans are really good at doing,”

Contact the author: [email protected]

Northrop Grumman says past work on the abortive 25mm XM25 grenade launcher, nicknamed “The Punisher,” served as an “initial baseline” for a new design it is now working on with Colt. The Northrop Grumman-Colt launcher is being developed primarily to meet the U.S. Army’s requirements for a future Precision Grenadier System (PGS), a program that emerged after the XM25 was canceled.

Rylan Harris, Director of Strategy and Business Development for Northrop Grumman’s Armament Systems business unit, provided an update on the company’s work related to PGS during a press briefing today. TWZ, as well as other outlets, were in attendance. Currently, the new grenade launcher from Northrop Grumman and Colt is an 11-and-a-half-pound semi-automatic design that feeds from five-round box magazines and looks like an oversized rifle.

Development of the preceding XM25 had begun in the mid-2000s as a partnership between German gunmaker Heckler & Koch (HK) and Alliant Techsystems (ATK). In 2015, ATK merged with Orbital Sciences Corporation to form Orbital ATK, which continued to be involved with the Punisher. Northrop Grumman acquired Orbital ATK in 2018, the same year the XM25 program came to an end. The Army citing weight and physical bulk, as well as cost, as factors in that decision. The current PGS program traces back to at least 2020.

“From the PGS side of things, I’d say the very initial baseline is from the Orbital ATK XM25 design,” Northrop Grumman’s Harris said today. “Similar caliber, I’d say similar programmable airburst round, which helps give that maturity.”

Programmable 25mm airbursting rounds were at the core of the XM25 effort, which was also known over the years as the Individual Semi-Automatic Airburst System (ISAAS) and the Counter-Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE) System. The weapon had a computerized fire control system that used a laser range finder to determine the distance to the target and then set the round to detonate at the optimal point in its flight. The Army’s main goal was to give soldiers a new way to get at enemy personnel behind hard cover at an appreciable range.

The PGS requirements the Army has publicly released to date still include a call for ‘counter-defilade’ rounds, but also ammunition types that can be used to engage lightly armored vehicles and small drones. There are also demands for the weapon to be able to help blow open doors and be usable in close combat scenarios. The launcher also has to have an effective range of at least 1,640 feet (500 meters). Overall, the Army expects the PGS to offer a significant leap in capability over its existing 40x46mm M203 and M320 grenade launchers.

The XM25 “system did not have a counter-UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] capability, nor was there a door breaching capability developed at that point in time,” Northrop Grumman’s Harris noted today. “So, we’ve kind of completely revolutionized the fire control, as well as part of the ammunition suite, to provide a lighter weight [and] more reliable weapon system.”

So far, “Northrop Grumman has worked to develop four specific 25mm rounds to use with PGS, including our airbursting round, our county-UAS proximity round, a close quarter battle round, as well as a target practice round,” he also said.

Northrop Grumman and Colt have also previously shown prototypes and mockups of their launcher with the XM157 computerized sighting system from Vortex Optics and the SMASH-series computerized optic from Israeli firm Smartshooter. The company has told TWZ in the past that multiple options for optics are being explored. The launcher has a multi-button control system in front of the trigger, as well, but how exactly it works is unclear. The Army is already fielding the XM157 as the standard optic for its new 6.8x51mm XM7 rifles and XM250 light machine guns. The SMASH family is seeing expanding use within the U.S. military and elsewhere globally.

Northrop Grumman and Colt are not the only ones that are already positioning themselves to enter the Army’s PGS competition when it kicks off. In May, Barrett Firearms and MARS, Inc. announced that their Squad Support Rifle System (SSRS), a 30mm semi-automatic grenade launcher design, had been selected as the winner of the Army’s xTechSoldier Lethality design challenge, an effort adjacent to the PGS program.

There were two finalists in the xTechSoldier Lethality challenge, with the other being a different semi-automatic 30mm design from the American division of the Belgian gunmaker Fabrique Nationale (FN) called the PGS-001. Last week, FN America announced that it had secured a contract from the Army for continued development of what it now calls the MTL-30 as part of a risk reduction effort directly feeding into the PGS program.

The American subsidiary of German firm Rheinmetall has also been developing the Highly Advanced Multi-Mission Rifle (HAMMR) based on its 40x46mm Squad Support Weapon 40 (SSW40). Other companies may still be angling to meet the Army’s PGS needs, as well.

“We’re definitely keeping a strong bead on the competitive landscape there,” Northrop Grumman’s Harris said. “From our analysis, we feel that our offering, and 25 millimeter [ammunition], provides the least amount of strain on the soldier regarding weight, as well as kick to the weapon system, while providing the maximum amount of range to be able to take out threats well beyond what the warfighter can see.”

In response to a direct question from TWZ‘s Howard Altman about whether Northrop Grumman had received a similar contract to FN America’s under the aforementioned risk reduction effort, Harris said “we do have a track with the Army” that is separate, and declined to elaborate.

“We are working with the Marine Corps, as well,” he added. “So it’s not just a single service that’s interested in the PGS offering.”

The Army has yet to share a firm timeline for when it is expecting the PGS competition to officially begin, when it hopes to pick a winner, and when those launchers might actually reach operational units.

In the meantime, Northrop Grumman and Colt are continuing to work on their 25mm launcher, leveraging experience and lessons from the XM25.

Contact the author: [email protected]

“The Conjuring: Last Rites” gave movie theaters a needed jolt over the weekend with a much better than expected domestic opening of $84 million and a global take of $194 million, a franchise best and the latest success for Warner Bros. and its New Line Cinema banner.

But it will take more than supernatural scares to ease Hollywood’s jitters after a weak summer movie season that exposed more challenges facing the traditional film industry.

Ticket sales fell slightly from last year’s summer season, which for the movie business spans from the first weekend of May through Labor Day. Movies grossed $3.67 billion in the U.S. and Canada this summer, down 0.2% from the same period in 2024, according to data from Comscore. More importantly, it’s still down from the pre-pandemic norm of about $4 billion, a disappointing result given that summer typically accounts for about 40% of annual grosses.

If you account for inflation, it’s even worse. Adjusting for today’s dollars, summer revenue was down 34% from 2019, meaning theater attendance was weaker than the topline revenue stats suggest. With actual attendance still impaired compared with the days before COVID-19, there’s a growing sense that the industry’s fears have come true: Audience habits have changed, and they’re not going back.

The problem wasn’t a lack of movies compared with last year. The effects of the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes have dissipated by now.

Rather, the issue was a shortage of big studio movies that audiences really wanted to see. The biggest release was Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” remake, which collected $424 million domestically. There was nothing like last summer’s “Inside Out 2” or “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which both generated more than $600 million in North America.

The problem of the shrinking overall audience could be due to multiple factors.

In particular, theater owners blame the shrinking of the theatrical window — the period of time a new movie is held back from home video after its big screen debut — to roughly 45 days from the previously standard 90 days. Audiences know they don’t have to wait long before a new movie becomes available in their living room. That encourages them to save their money for only the biggest, Imax-worthy spectacles. The growing influence of Imax and premium large format screening may exacerbate that trend, as audiences choose between paying extra for a better “experience,” or just waiting to see “F1 The Movie” on their couch.

There were plenty of sequels and reboots, but those often performed worse than prior installments, indicating that audiences were less enthusiastic about seeing another Marvel movie or rampaging dino feature. “Jurassic World: Rebirth” made $861 million globally, which was big, but still the series’ smallest outing since 2001’s “Jurassic Park III.” Warner Bros.’ “Superman” collected a healthy $614 million, but that was still less than 2013’s “Man of Steel” ($670 million).

Superheroes didn’t come flying to the rescue. Marvel’s “Thunderbolts” put up a modest $382 million while “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” opened strong but collapsed in subsequent weeks for a total of $511 million worldwide, a middling outcome for the Disney-owned comic book universe. No wonder studios are increasingly looking at video games as a source of intellectual property for movie adaptations, as my colleague Sam Masunaga recently wrote. After all, Generation Alpha’s list of favorite franchises is dominated by video game-related titles, according to a recent National Research Group report.

Another threat emerged as international audiences appeared to sour on some U.S. blockbusters. “Superman” and “Fantastic Four” grossed less abroad than they did at home, which is an unusual result for big-budget action flicks.

It’s not clear why, but some explanations have been floated. China is no longer the reliable source of revenue that it once was, as audiences increasingly favor local-language productions. Some speculate that America’s diminished standing abroad has contributed to audience fatigue. The quintessential Americanness of the Superman brand is also widely believed to be a factor in that film’s underperformance outside the U.S.

Original animation struggled, as Pixar fielded its worst opening weekend ever with “Elio.” To add insult to injury, Sony Pictures Animation’s “KPop Demon Hunters” became a cultural phenomenon, but only after first launching on Netflix.

The rest of the year has some major releases, but they’re not expected to bring the business back to full strength. September is usually a slow month for moviegoing, “Last Rites” notwithstanding. Disney’s “Zootopia 2,” Universal’s “Wicked: For Good” and James Cameron’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” will probably do huge business. But while individual films can do well, the overall picture isn’t so rosy.

Stuff we wrote

Number of the week

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to authors and publishers to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of illegally using written work to train its chatbot Claude.

The topline figure is the largest known settlement for a copyright case, equating to $3,000 per work for an estimated 500,000 books, The Times’ Queenie Wong reported.

But the case was not an outright win for authors worried about AI being trained on their published material. Far from it.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco ruled in June that Anthropic’s use of the books to train the AI models constituted “fair use,” meaning it wasn’t illegal. Fair use is a doctrine that allows for the limited use of copyrighted materials without permission in certain cases, such as teaching, criticism and news reporting. It’s an essential part of AI companies’ defense against copyright infringement claims.

The real problem for Anthropic was that the startup had illegally downloaded millions of books through online libraries. So the piracy was the true sin in this case, not the training of AI on books without permission.

Anthropic pirated at least 7 million books from Books3, Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror, online libraries containing unauthorized copies of copyrighted books, to train its software, according to the judge. However, it also bought millions of print copies in bulk and scanned them into digital and machine-readable forms, which Alsup found to be in the bounds of fair use.

Film shoots

Finally …

Listen: Zach Top’s “Ain’t in It for My Health,” for throwback country goodness.

Read: Amy Nicholson’s review of “The Wizard of Oz” at Sphere in Las Vegas.

The U.S.-China competition is intensifying in the Indo-Pacific, especially in the maritime domain, and it is increasing the risk of a dangerous miscalculation. Both countries are rapidly building up their navies, reinforcing their deterrence posture, and heading for riskier military encounters. Yet while the buildup of hard power is accelerating, crisis management mechanisms are left shockingly underdeveloped.

Such dynamics remind one of the most unfortunate security failures in modern history: the pre-WWI Anglo-German naval race. Similarly, at the time, rising powers clashed at sea, backed by nationalist ambitions and rigid alliance systems, while mechanisms for de-escalation and maritime communication were nonexistent. Eventually, a fragile security environment was formed, prone to escalation from small events into a global conflagration.

Today, the U.S. and China are taking a similar path. If the United States does not urgently invest in an institutionalized crisis management mechanism alongside its defense modernization, it could lead to a strategic trap that is “ready to fight but unprepared for de-escalation.”

Risk of Escalation: Today’s U.S. and China

Like Germany’s pre-1914 maritime expansion under the Kaiser’s rule, China is attempting to modify the regional order by its naval power. In 2023, China’s PLA Navy commissioned at least two Type 055 destroyers and multiple Type 052D and Type 054A frigates, totaling more than 20 major naval platforms (including submarines and amphibious ships). Simultaneously, sea trials of Fujian, China’s third aircraft carrier—the most technologically advanced naval vessel in the fleet—have begun. In addition, coupled with A2/AD capabilities such as anti-ship ballistic missiles, including DF-21D and DF-26, such a military buildup can be considered a clear intent to complicate U.S. Navy operations in the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea.

The U.S. response was strong and swift. Under the context of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI), Washington has invested more than 27 billion USD since FY 2022 in forward basing, pre-positioning of munitions, and enhancing maritime operational resilience in the Indo-Pacific. In addition, the U.S. Navy is continuously investing in Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, Virginia-class fast-attack submarines, and unmanned platforms. Strategic clarity is increasingly shaped by operational deterrence, and a greater number of U.S. naval platforms are now being forward deployed in contested waters.

Yet, just like before WWI, investment in military hardware is ahead of investment in crisis management systems. The gap between military capability and the mechanisms to manage conflicts is increasing, and such misalignment was what led the European countries to disaster in 1914.

Historical Parallels: The Anglo-German Trap

The Anglo-German naval race that occurred from the 1890s to 1914 reminds us of the current situation in the Indo-Pacific. Due to its industrial confidence, nationalist ambition, and strategic anxiety, Germany challenged the UK’s naval supremacy. In response, the UK reinforced its maritime dominance, built the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought, and eventually triggered a vicious cycle of competitive arms racing.

Despite the growing perception of risk, naval arms control was unsuccessful. The construction freeze proposed by the UK was refused by Berlin, and diplomatic overtures, including the 1912 Haldane Mission, collapsed due to distrust, lack of transparency, and domestic political pressures.

Effective crisis management did not exist. Maritime incidents that occurred in the North Sea and the Mediterranean were not arbitrated while diplomacy was intermittent and reactive. When the two sides tried to slow down the arms race, strategic distrust was deeply embedded. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand transmogrified into a world war not because of one party’s aggression but because there was no off-ramp. Similar vulnerabilities exist in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.

The Crisis Management Gap

Although some formal structures (military hotlines) exist between the U.S. and China, such instruments turn out to be continuously ineffective during crisis situations. During the 2023 Chinese balloon incident, Beijing did not respond to the U.S.’s urgent request for a hotline call. After Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit in 2022, China suspended the senior defense dialogue.

Meanwhile, risky close encounters are increasing. For example, in June 2023, a Chinese J-16 fighter intercepted a U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft in a dangerous manner. In the same month, a Chinese destroyer violated navigation safety norms by crossing directly in front of USS Chung-Hoon in the Taiwan Strait.

These incidents are not individual events but systemic ones. And such events are occurring while there are no reliable institutionalized communication protocols between the two sides, where both are under a constant alert status.

To correct this, it is advisable for Washington to create a Joint Crisis Management Cell within INDOPACOM. This center should include liaison officers from the U.S., Japan, and Australia and be empowered to rapidly activate de-escalation protocols when a high-risk maritime incident occurs, even if high-level political channels are stagnant. This crisis management cell should utilize pre-negotiated crisis response templates—similar to an air traffic controller managing near-miss procedures—and guarantee the clarity and continuity of communication.

At the same time, the U.S. should embark upon a U.S.-China maritime deconfliction agreement, modeled upon the U.S.-Soviet INCSEA accord of the Cold War era. That accord, negotiated in 1972, defined maritime encounter procedures and communication protocols, and it proved durable even during the height of the Cold War. The modern version of INCSEA does not necessitate trust but is a functional necessity when heavily armed parties are operating at close range.

Strategic Effectiveness, Rather Than Symbolic Hardware

In the early 20th century, the UK’s naval expansion was not necessarily strategically consistent. Occasionally prestige overwhelmed operational planning, and doctrine lagged behind technological innovation. The U.S. should avoid falling into a similar trap.

Modern U.S. Navy planning should emphasize systems that actually provide effectiveness in a contested environment. In that sense, unmanned systems, including the MQ-9B SeaGuardian, long-range munitions like LRASM, and resilient RC2 structures are necessities. Such capabilities could enable U.S. forces to function even under missile saturation and communication denial situations.

Logistical innovation is also crucial. Forward bases situated in Guam, the Philippines, and Northern Australia should be diversified and strengthened to serve as maritime resupply nodes and distributed logistics hubs.

In addition, all these elements should be coordinated across domains. The U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Army, and allies’ coordinated integrated capacity would be sine qua non for effectively projecting power and managing military escalation.

Alliance Management and Entanglement

Although entangled alliances did not trigger WWI, they did contribute to its rapid escalation. The risk lay not only in misjudgment but also in the absence of a common structure that could manage shocks within complexly interconnected treaty systems.

The U.S. faces a similar risk. While the U.S. is maintaining defense treaties with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, and Australia, it is deepening its alignment in the region with AUKUS and the Quad. But many of these arrangements lack joint crisis response protocols or clear role expectations concerning the Taiwan contingency or conflictual situations in the South China Sea.

To mitigate such inherent risk, Japan should proactively lead in creating a Strategic Escalation Forum by 2026. This forum would summon decision-makers of the U.S.’s key allies—Australia, India, and the ASEAN countries—and jointly plan crisis responses, define thresholds, and establish mechanisms that provide political signaling during escalation.

As for South Korea, it should clarify its stance of non-combat in a Taiwan contingency through declaratory policy. This would confirm that South Korea would not dispatch troops to the Taiwan Strait, yet it could include commitments of logistics support, cyber operations, and intelligence sharing. Such a stance would lessen Beijing’s misunderstanding and alleviate allies’ concerns while enabling Seoul to prevent itself from being entrapped by a high-intensity scenario.

At the same time, Washington should initiate scenario planning on how AUKUS and Quad partners could contribute to coordinated crisis management, not necessarily through combat roles but through measures including ISR, sanctions enforcement, and strategic signaling.

The Future Path: To Prevent Another 1914

U.S.-China naval competition will not disappear, at least in the foreseeable future. Yet Washington has a choice: it could escalate through inertia, or it could manage competition through strategy. It is important to construct more submarines and missiles, yet that alone is insufficient. The genuine risk lies in the absence of an institutionalized safety mechanism.

If Europe was engulfed in the 1914 war due to unmanaged arms races and rigid alliances, the Indo-Pacific could also face a similar fate. If leaders in Washington do not create a structure that could absorb shocks and prevent escalation, the Taiwan Strait, just like Sarajevo, could become a spark.

The historical lesson is to plan for great powers not to collide with one another, rather than leaving them to rush toward an inevitable collision.

Washington should act now—not after a collision, but before—by institutionalizing a de-escalation mechanism before the strategic environment becomes rigid. The window of opportunity for prevention is still open, but it is narrowing.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — U.S. veterans of the war in Afghanistan are telling a commission reviewing decisions on the 20-year conflict that their experience was not only hell, but also confounding, demoralizing and at times humiliating.

The bipartisan Afghanistan War Commission aims to reflect such veterans’ experiences in a report due to Congress next year, which will analyze key strategic, diplomatic, military and operational decisions made between June 2001 and the chaotic withdrawal in August 2021.

The group released its second interim report on Tuesday, drawing no conclusions yet but identifying themes emerging from thousands of pages of government documents; some 160 interviews with cabinet-level officials, military commanders, diplomats, Afghan and Pakistani leaders and others; and forums with veterans like one recently held at a national Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Columbus, Ohio.

“What can we learn from the Afghanistan War?” asked an Aug. 12 discussion session with four of the commission’s 16 members. What they got was two straight hours of dozens of veterans’ personal stories — not one glowingly positive, and most saturated in frustration and disappointment.

“I think the best way to describe that experience was awful,” said Marine veteran Brittany Dymond, who served in Afghanistan in 2012.

Navy veteran Florence Welch said the 2021 withdrawal made her ashamed she ever served there.

“It turned us into a Vietnam, a Vietnam that none of us worked for,” she said.

Members of Congress, some driven by having served in the war, created the independent commission several months after the withdrawal, after an assessment by the Democratic administration of then-President Biden faulted the actions of President Trump’s first administration for constraining U.S. options. A Republican review, in turn, blamed Biden. Views of the events remain divided, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered yet another review this spring.

The commission wants to understand the bigger picture of a conflict that spanned four presidential administrations and cost more than 2,400 American lives, said Co-Chair Dr. Colin Jackson.

“So we’re interested in looking hard at the end of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan, but we’re equally interested in understanding the beginning, the middle and the end,” he said in an interview in Columbus.

Co-chair Shamila Chaudhary said the panel is also exploring more sweeping questions.

“So our work is not just about what the U.S. did in Afghanistan but what the U.S. should be doing in any country where it deems it has a national security interest,” she said. “And not just should it be there, but how it should behave, what values does it guide itself by, and how does it engage with individuals who are very different from themselves.”

Jackson said one of the commission’s priorities is making sure the final report, due in August 2026, isn’t “unrecognizable to any veteran of the Afghanistan conflict.”

“The nature of the report should be representative of every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine experience,” he said.

Dymond told commissioners a big problem was the mission.

“You cannot exert a democratic agenda, which is our foreign policy, you cannot do that on a culture of people who are not bought into your ideology,” she said. “What else do we expect the outcome to be? And so we had two decades of service members lost and maimed because we’re trying to change an ideology that they didn’t ask for.”

The experience left eight-year Army veteran Steve Orf demoralized. He said he didn’t go there “to beat a bad guy.”

“Those of us who served generally wanted to believe that we were helping to improve the world, and we carried with us the hopes, values, and principles of the United States — values and principles that also seem to have been casualties of this war,” he told commissioners. “For many of us, faith with our leaders is broken and trust in our country is broken.”

Tuesday’s report identifies emerging themes of the review to include strategic drift, interagency incoherence, and whether the war inside Afghanistan and the counterterrorism war beyond were pursuing the same aims or at cross purposes.

It also details difficulties the commission has encountered getting key documents. According to the report, the Biden administration initially denied the commission’s requests for White House materials on the implementation of the February 2020 peace agreement Trump signed with the Taliban, called the Doha Agreement, and on the handling of the withdrawal, citing executive confidentiality concerns.

The transition to Trump’s second term brought further delays and complications, but since the commission has pressed the urgency of its mission with the new administration, critical intelligence and documents have now begun to flow, the report says.

Smyth and Aftoora-Orsagos write for the Associated Press.

FOR a housewife who started out charging ten pence for after-school drama lessons, Sylvia Young had an incredible ability to spot raw talent.

The 85-year-old, who died on Wednesday, helped hone the skills of a who’s who of the ­British entertainment industry.

15

15

15

15

Among those to have passed the audition to join her theatre school in London were singers Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis, Dua Lipa, Rita Ora and three-quarters of All Saints.

Dua, who has won seven Brit awards and three Grammys, said that she did not know she could sing until a teacher at the Sylvia Young Theatre School told her how good she was.

Actors who attended her classes include Keeley Hawes, Doctor Who’s Matt Smith, Nicholas Hoult, who is in the latest Superman blockbuster, and Emmy-nominated Adolescence and Top Boy star Ashley Walters.

The school was also a conveyor belt for EastEnders stars, with Nick Berry, Letitia Dean, Adam Woodyatt and Dean Gaffney all passing through its doors.

Stage fright

But there were problems along the way. In 1998 one of the drama ­masters was arrested for indecent assault, and the company struggled to survive the Covid shutdown.

The pressures of fame also proved too much for some former pupils, including the late Winehouse and EastEnders’ original Mark Fowler, David Scarboro, who was found at the bottom of cliffs as Beachy Head in East Sussex in 1988.

Sylvia, though, was loved by her former pupils, many of whom paid tribute to the “backstage ­matriarch”.

Keeley Hawes wrote: “I wouldn’t have the career I have today without her help”.

And All Saints singer Nicole ­Appleton commented: “This is going to really affect us all who were lucky enough to be part of her amazing world growing up. What a time, the best memories.”

DJ Tony Blackburn added: “She was a very lovely lady who I had the privilege of knowing for many years. She will be sadly missed.”

Actress Sadie Frost commented online: “What a woman, what a family, what a legacy! Sending everyone so much love and support. She was always so lovely to me.”

And TV and radio presenter Kate Thornton said she “meant so much to so many”.

Sylvia did not boast about the ­success of her students and the school’s website does not mention its incredible roster of ex-pupils.

But it is hard to imagine a single drama teacher ever having as much impact as her. Sylvia’s two daughters, Alison and Frances Ruffelle, who are directors of the theatre school, said: “Our mum was a true visionary.

“She gave young people from all walks of life the chance to pursue their performing arts skills to the highest standard.

“Her rare ability to recognise raw talent and encourage all her students contributed to the richness of today’s theatre and music world, even ­winning herself an Olivier Award along the way.”

15

15

15

15

Sylvia made it to the top of the British entertainment industry the hard way.

She was the eldest of nine children born to Abraham Bakal, a tailor’s presser, and housewife Sophie in London’s East End. Born in 1939 just after the outbreak of World War Two she remembered the air raid sirens during the Blitz of the capital.

She was evacuated to a village near Barnsley during the war, only returning home once it was over.

At the local library she was gripped by reading plays and would meet up with friends to perform them.

While still at school she joined a theatre group in North London, but her dreams of treading the boards in the West End were dashed by stage fright.

She said: “I used to lose my voice before every production. When I think about it, they were sort of panic attacks.”

Instead, she married telephone engineer Norman Ruffell in 1961 and stayed at home to look after their two daughters.

When Alison and Frances attended primary school, Sylvia started teaching drama to their fellow pupils. It cost just ten pence and the kids also got a cup of orange squash and a biscuit.

Word spread and when her ­students got the nickname the ­Young-uns, Sylvia decided to adopt the surname Young for business ­purposes.

The first Sylvia Young Theatre School was set up in 1981 in Drury Lane in the heart of London’s theatre district.

Two years later, it moved to a ­former church school in Marylebone in central London, where most of its famous pupils got their start.

Even though it is fee-paying, everyone has to pass an audition — and only one in 25 applicants are successful.

15

15

15

15

It costs up to £7,000 per term for full-time students and only has places for 250 pupils aged ten to 16.

There are bursaries and fee reductions for pupils from less well-off backgrounds, plus a Saturday school and part-time classes.

Sylvia was always keen to avoid it being a school for rich kids.

When she took an assembly she would ask pupils, “What mustn’t we be?”, and they would shout back, “Stage school brats”.

Keeping kids level-headed when stardom beckoned was also important for the teacher.

She said: “I offer good training and like to keep the students as individual as possible.

“We develop a lot of confidence and communication skills. Of course they want immediate stardom, but they’re not expecting it. You don’t find notices up here about who’s doing what. It is actually played down tremendously.”

‘Baby Spice was lovely’

A need for discipline even applied to Sylvia’s daughter Frances, who she expelled from the school.

Frances clearly got over it, going on to have a career in musical theatre and representing the United Kingdom in the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing tenth.

Those genes were strong, with Frances’ daughter, stage name Eliza Doolittle, having a Top Five hit with Pack Up in 2010.

The ever-rebellious Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011 aged 27 from accidental alcohol poisoning, claimed to have been kicked out, too.

She said: “I was just being a brat and being disruptive and so on. I loved it there, I didn’t have a problem, I just didn’t want to conform.

“And they didn’t like me wearing a nose piercing.”

But Sylvia did not want Amy to leave. She said: “She would upset the academic teachers, except the English teacher who thought she’d be a novelist. She seemed to be just loved. But she was naughty.”

Other singers were clearly inspired by their time at the school, which moved to new premises in Westminster in 2010.

15

15

15

Dua Lipa, who went to the ­Saturday school from the age of nine, was asked to sing in front of other pupils shortly after joining.

She said, “I was terrified”, but that the vocal coach “was the first person to tell me I could sing”.

Talent scouts and casting agents would put up requests on the notice board at the school. One such ­posting led to Emma Bunton ­joining the Spice Girls.

Of Baby Spice, Sylvia said: “She got away with whatever she could. But she was a lovely, happy-go-lucky individual with a sweet ­singing voice.”

Groups were also formed by ­Sylvia’s ex-pupils.

All Saints singer Melanie Blatt became best friends with Nicole Appleton at Sylvia Young’s and brought her in when her band needed new singers in 1996.

But Melanie was not complimentary about the school, once saying: “I just found the whole thing really up its own arse.”

Casting agents did, however, hold the classes in very high regard.

The professionalism instilled in the students meant that producers from major British TV shows such as EastEnders and Grange Hill kept coming back for more.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of less well-known performers treading the boards of Britain’s stages also have the school’s ethos to thank for their success.

Those achievements were recognised in the 2005 Honours List when Sylvia was awarded an OBE for services to the arts.

Sir Cameron Mackintosh, who has produced shows including Les Miserables and Cats, said: “The show that provided the greatest showcase for the young actors she discovered and nurtured is undoubtedly Oliver! which has featured hundreds of her students over the years.

“Sylvia was a pioneer who became a caring but formidable children’s agent.”

MILWAUKEE — As a tour group gathered in the press box at American Family Field on Monday, the stadium guide looked down at the diamond and tried to identify the hitter in a Dodger blue T-shirt taking thunderous swings in an afternoon batting practice session.

“I’m not sure which player that is,” the tour guide said.

One knowledgeable Dodger fan in the group recognized it wasn’t a big-leaguer at all — at least not yet.

“That’s Dino Ebel’s son,” the fan said. “He’s gonna be a top draft pick next week.”

Brady Ebel might not be a household name yet around the sport but in Dodger circles, the rise of the Corona High infielder, and 17-year-old son of longtime third base coach Dino Ebel, has long been a proud organizational story in the making.

Six years ago, Brady and his younger brother Trey (a 16-year-old junior on a loaded Corona team last season), first started tagging along to Dodger Stadium with their dad after the Dodgers hired him away from the Angels at the start of the 2019 season.

Brady Ebel could be one of three Corona High baseball stars to be selected in the first round of the MLB amateur draft next week.

(Ric Tapia/Getty Images)

Back then, they were like many of the other children of players and staff that the family-friendly Dodgers would welcome around the ballpark. Not even teenagers yet, Ebel’s sons would be taking ground balls and shagging in the outfield during batting practice before the start of Dodger games.

Now, they are both standout prospects with major college commitments (Brady to Louisiana State, Trey to Texas A&M) and expected futures in pro ball.

On Sunday, Brady is expected to be a Day 1, and very possibly first round, pick in the MLB draft — a rise borne of his own physical gifts, but also aided by a childhood spent growing up in the presence of big-league players.

“I’m so blessed, me and my brother,” Brady said this week, after accompanying his dad on the Dodgers’ recent road trip in Milwaukee. “It’s my favorite thing to do. Come to the stadium with my dad. Get better. And watch guys go about it. Because I know I’m gonna be here soon. This is what I’m gonna be doing.”

The physical traits that make Brady a coveted prospect are obvious: His 6-foot-3, 190-pound frame; his smooth, compact left-handed swing; his defensive feel and strong throwing arm from the left side of the infield.

What sets Brady apart from the typical high school prospects that populate draft boards this time of year is his unique upbringing in the game, having absorbed countless lessons on his trips to work with his dad.

“Watching those guys do it every day, just being able to be in the clubhouse and walk around and see how guys act, has helped me and my brother a lot,” Brady said, shortly after peppering balls all over the outfield stands at the Brewers’ home ballpark. “I take pieces from everybody.”

Corona High infielders (from left): second baseman Trey Ebel, shortstop Billy Carlson and third baseman Brady Ebel.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

The Ebel sons first got an up-close look at major league life in Anaheim, marveling as young boys at superstars such as Mike Trout and Albert Pujols during Dino’s 12-year stint on the Angels’ coaching staff.

When their dad was hired by the Dodgers, their first-person education continued at Chavez Ravine, where many Dodgers players and staffers have marveled at their own evolution into coveted recruits and MLB draft prospects.

“As a dad, I love it, because I get to spend more time with them, and I get to watch them get better,” Dino said. “The process of watching them work with major league players is something I’ll never forget.”

Many days in recent summers, the pair have been a constant presence at the ballpark.

There have been ground rules to follow, as Dino noted: “Stay out of everybody’s way. When you shag, get in the warning track. When you go eat, if a player is behind you, you get in the back of the line.”

The fundamental lessons they’ve learned, from watching players hit in the cage, to catching balls at first base during infield drills, to talking to other members of the coaching staff during quiet stretches of the day, have been endless. The fingerprints it has left on their game have been profound.

“Process, approach, work habits, how to respect the game, how you go about your work every day,” Dino said. “For them to see that, from guys at the top of the chain of elite superstars in the game … that’s what I’ve seen them take into their game. Trying something different. Listening to what the players are telling them in the cage, on the field.”

Brady, for example, has become a keen observer of Freddie Freeman’s work in the batting cage during recent years.

“There’s stuff he grew up doing that he still continues to do,” Brady said of Freeman. “Different drills. Keeping your hands inside. Driving the ball up the middle. I’ve been doing that since I was 8. And he’s 30-whatever, still doing it. It’s the simple, little stuff.”

As the Ebel boys have gotten older, Dino noticed how they would get home from the stadium, go to a practice field the next day, and replicate specific drills and techniques they’d witnessed the night before.

“It’s pretty special for me, as a dad, to watch them go through this process,” Dino said. “And then, as a coach, how they’re getting better each day they come out here.”

Such roots haven’t been lost on evaluators. Most scouting reports of Brady note his advanced approach and discipline at the plate. MLB Pipeline’s write-up of him ahead of the draft lauded his baseball IQ, and that “his experience working with big leaguers for a long time was clearly on display” as a prep player.

In Baseball America’s latest mock draft, Brady is projected to go 33rd overall to the Boston Red Sox — where he could join Corona teammates Seth Hernandez and Billy Carlson as the highest-drafted trio of high school teammates in the event’s history.

Looming seven picks after that, however, are the Dodgers, a team that would need no introduction to a player that grew up before their eyes.

“That would be really cool, just to be with my dad’s organization,” Brady said of possibly winding up with the club. “We’ll see what happens on draft day. You never know.”

The 12-day war between Israel and Iran ended with a fragile ceasefire. A review of the war’s economic toll suggests that a prolonged conflict would have been economically unsustainable for both sides. For Iran, this was anticipated given the country’s decades-long exposure to sanctions, but for Israel, the war marked a test of its economic strength and resilience and exposed deeper vulnerabilities. As recently as last year, the Israeli Finance Minister had stated with striking confidence that ‘the Israeli economy is strong by all measures, capable of sustaining all war efforts, on the front line and home front, until, with God’s help, victory is achieved.’  

Israel’s direct military costs averaged USD 725 million per day – more than eight times its estimated daily defence expenditure, considering the annual allocation of approximately USD 33 billion (NIS 109.8 billion) for the Ministry of Defence in the 2025 state budget. Airstrikes on Iranian targets cost around USD 590 million in the first two days alone, while interceptions are estimated to have cost at least USD 200 million daily. Even at this tremendous cost, missile defence operations could not prevent Tehran’s retaliatory strikes following the attacks on military and civilian infrastructure across the country from causing direct damage to Israel exceeding USD 1.5 billion, including to key financial and economic centres of activity. 

The nerve centre of Israel’s financial market – the Tel Aviv stock exchange building – was directly hit. While stocks quickly erased early losses during the war, leading the Israeli Finance Minister to hail it as ‘proof of Israel’s economic resilience–even under fire,’ attacks on Research and Development (R&D) centres, considered the most dynamic part of Israel’s economic core, that is the high-tech sector, represented a loss of decades of research, development, trial and error, and investment. Particularly consequential was the strike on the Weizmann Institute, known for its links to military projects and targeted in retaliation for the assassination of several Iranian nuclear scientists, which led to the destruction of 45 laboratories. One of the labs struck, for instance, had material from 22 years’ worth of research. Any future war could push the boundaries further, with even more vital sites likely to be targeted. 

Israel’s economic growth this year is projected to decline by at least 0.2 per cent, with the government’s budget deficit likely to reach 6 per cent of GDP, surpassing the 4.9 per cent cap set by the Finance Ministry. Last month, an Israeli official had hinted at the possibility of Tel Aviv seeking additional financial support from the United States to offset the war’s costs and address urgent defence needs. 

READ: Germany’s Merz says he has ‘no doubt’ about legality of Israel’s attacks on Iran

A 12-day war causing such significant economic consequences reveals how brittle and vulnerable the Israeli economy is. 

For Iran, the financial cost has been equally significant. The missiles alone cost Iran around USD 800 million, more than its estimated 12-day defence budget, based on the USD 23.1 billion annual allocation for March 2025-26. Tehran has now reportedly planned to triple its budget in 2025, reflecting the need to replenish resources. 

Iran’s economic core – the oil and gas sector – was also severely impacted. The drop in oil exports during the war reportedly cost Iran USD 1.4 billion in lost revenue. Some of Iran’s vital oil and gas facilities, including the major South Pars gas field, were directly hit. Unlike Israel, Iran’s defence systems were not as advanced, making it less capable of preventing strikes on vital sectors of the economy. However, analysts opine that Iran demonstrated more resilience than initially thought by avoiding a total collapse, and reportedly, maintained some of its oil exports during the war through a ‘shadow fleet’ of tankers. 

The primary lesson that emerges from this is not one of ‘strengthening resilience’ to mitigate the economic consequences of future wars, but that there are limits to technological and economic strength in the face of war. In fact, states with advanced economies and sophisticated defence systems, such as Israel, can overestimate their capacity to absorb and manage the consequences of war, thereby lowering their threshold for initiating a conflict. Even if enough resilience is built that vital infrastructure and sectors remain immune during a war, military expenditures can reach levels so high that their opportunity costs (the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen) can last for decades. 

It now falls upon Israeli and Jewish voices to ask the hard questions boldly and without fear. At what cost does Israel pursue its military adventurism? How long will taxpayers’ money be poured into the bloodshed of innocent civilians? The same questions ought to be raised by the American voices, given the United States’ direct support to and complicity in Israel’s military campaigns. The actions of political leaders arguably become unsustainable once the domestic population (in large numbers) begins to understand and categorically question the price of wars that their governments fight in their name and take pride in. 

BLOG: The UK refused to support plans to overthrow Khomeini’s revolutionary rule, one year after the outbreak of the Iraq-Iran war

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

BBC

No ‘safe tan’

Tips for keeping kids sun safe

Osman, who was given his Everton debut by Moyes in 2003, believes that Everton must retain key players such as Jarrad Branthwaite, James Tarkowski and Jordan Pickford, while recruiting more leaders to bolster a rapidly thinning squad.

“A Moyes dressing room is hard, demanding,” he said. “Having spoke to a couple of the squad, they love the clarity and what he’s asking of them.

“A manager has to ask for that level and he always did that when I played for him. You also look at O’Brien, who has excelled at right-back when people thought he couldn’t do it. We need to make sure these people stay on the pitch.”

The failed pursuit of new Chelsea striker Liam Delap, who was spoken to by Moyes, shows that centre-forward – and more goals in the team – is a priority, along with a right-back, right-winger and central midfielder. Departures, though, mean that recruitment is needed in almost every position to provide squad depth.

The club are reportedly interested, external in Villareal striker Thierno Barry, who is currently playing for France in the European Under-21 Championship.

Everton have taken steps to streamline their process, moving away from a director-of-football model following the departure of Kevin Thelwell to a sports leadership team headed by new chief executive Angus Kinnear.

He has said that Everton will utilise experts in data and analytics, football operations, recruitment, talent ID and player trading as part of the club’s evolving approach.

Kinnear has also already met with supporters group the Fan Advisory Board – a far removal from the previous regime when former manager Dyche described communicating with then-owner Moshiri by “Whatsapp and the odd phone call”.

Osman has backed the new structure to succeed and added: “It’s time to get behind the new hierarchy and I expect they would lean into Moyes’ experience as much as they can. I trust David Moyes more than anyone.”

Tel Aviv’s decision to launch a new war against Iran on June 13 is a disaster in the making. No one will benefit, including the Israeli government, and many will suffer. The exchange of fire has already resulted in at least 80 people killed in Iran and 10 in Israel.

It is tragically clear that the lessons of past failed military adventurism in the region have been entirely ignored.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has branded the war as “pre-emptive”, aimed at preventing Tehran from developing its own nuclear weapon. In doing so, he has repeated the strategic blunder of the last two politicians to launch an alleged “pre-emptive” attack in the region, US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

As Israeli jets and missiles streaked across the Middle East’s skies and carried out their deadly strikes against Iranian military sites and military leaders, they immediately made the world a far more dangerous place. Just like the US-British invasion of Iraq, this unprovoked attack is set to bring more instability to an already volatile region.

Netanyahu claimed that the attacks were meant to devastate Iran’s nuclear capabilities. So far, the Israeli army has hit three nuclear facilities, Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow, causing various levels of damage. However, it is unlikely that these strikes will actually put a stop to the Iranian nuclear programme, and the Israeli prime minister knows it.

The Iranian authorities have intentionally built the Natanz site deep underground so that it is impervious to all but the strongest bunker-busting bombs. Tel Aviv lacks the capability to permanently destroy it because it does not have the Massive Ordnance Penetrator or the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bombs that are produced by the United States.

Washington has long refused to provide these, even under the administration of US President Donald Trump, which has coddled Israeli officials and sought to shield them from sanctions over their war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Trump’s team has recently indicated again that it would not supply these arms to Tel Aviv.

From US official reactions after the attack, it is not entirely clear to what extent Washington was informed. The US State Department initially distanced the US from the initial attacks, labelling them a “unilateral” Israeli operation. Shortly after, Trump claimed that he was fully informed.

The extent of US involvement – and approval – for the attack remains a major question, but it immediately ended any hopes that its intense diplomacy with Tehran over its nuclear programme in recent weeks would result in a new deal, which is a short-term win for Netanyahu.

But further action against Iran appears dependent on bringing the US into the conflict. That is a huge gamble for Tel Aviv given the number of critics of US interventionism among the top ranks of Trump’s advisers. The US president himself has attempted to make reversing US interventionism a key part of his legacy.

Israel’s actions are already harming Trump’s other interests by pushing global oil prices up and complicating his relations with the Gulf states that have much to lose if the conflict disrupts shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

If Israel looks like it is winning, Trump will undoubtedly claim it as his own victory. But if Netanyahu’s strategy increasingly depends on trying to drag Washington into another Middle Eastern war, he may well lash out against him.

As things stand now, unless Israel decides to breach international norms and use a nuclear weapon, making any further strategic achievements in Iran would indeed depend on the US.

Netanyahu’s second declared goal – overthrowing the Iranian regime – also seems out of reach.

A number of senior military commanders have been killed in targeted attacks, while Tel Aviv has openly called on the Iranian people to rise up against their government. But Israel’s unilateral aggression is likely to bring far more anger towards Tel Aviv among Iranians than it will against their own government, regardless of how undemocratic it may be.

In fact, Iranian regime assertions that a nuclear bomb is a needed deterrent against Israeli aggression now will appear more logical to those who doubted it domestically. And in other regional countries where Tehran’s interests had been retreating, Netanyahu’s actions risk breathing new life into these alliances.

But even if Israel succeeds in destabilising Tehran, it will not bring about regional peace. This is the lesson that should have been learned from the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The collapse of the Iraqi state in the aftermath led to a major rise in extremism and ultimately to the establishment of ISIL (ISIS) that terrorised so much of the region in the 2010s.

Israel has no chance of instituting a smooth transfer of power to a more pliant regime in Tehran. Occupying Iran to try to do so is out of the question given that the two countries do not share a border. US support for such an effort is also hard to imagine under the Trump administration because doing so would be sure to increase the risk of attacks against the US.

In other words, Netanyahu’s attacks may bring short-term tactical gains for Israel in delaying Iran’s nuclear ambitions and thwarting talks with the US, but they promise a long-term strategic disaster.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Fancy footwork won him Wimbledon.

Simple footwear won him everything since.

“The shoe has had a life of its own,” said Stan Smith, 78, whose eponymous Adidas kicks, with their timeless lines and leather uppers, are the king of all tennis sneakers with more than 100 million sold. “People from all walks of life have embraced them.”

Not surprisingly, Smith has a head for business to match his feet for tennis.

With that in mind, he and longtime business partner Gary Niebur wrote the just-released “Winning Trust: How to Create Moments that Matter,” aimed at helping businesses develop stronger relationships with their clients, with tips that readers can apply to their personal relationships and to sports.

“The book is about developing relationships that can elevate the element of trust, which is a depreciating asset in today’s world,” Smith said this week in a call from the French Open.

Stan Smith and Gary Niebur’s book, “Winning Trust,” was released earlier this year.

(Courtesy of Stan Smith)

When it comes to building and maintaining high-stakes relationships, Smith and Niebur have distilled their process into five key elements they call SERVE, a recurring theme throughout the book. That’s an acronym for Strategize, Engage, Recreate, Volley and Elevate.

For instance, recreate — as in recreation — means to build bonds through fun shared experiences, and volley means to trade ideas back and forth to find solutions.

“When people realize that you care more about the relationship than the transaction,” Niebur said, “trust follows.”

A onetime standout at Pasadena High and USC, Smith was a close friend of the late Arthur Ashe, the UCLA legend whose name graces the main stadium court at Flushing Meadows, N.Y., home of the U.S. Open.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Ashe’s victory at Wimbledon, when he beat the heavily favored Jimmy Connors in the 1975 final. Ashe remains the only Black man to win the singles title at that storied tournament.

“Arthur was a good friend,” Smith said. “He made a huge impact, and much more of an impact in the last few years of his life when he was fighting AIDS and the heart fund, and obviously for equal rights.”

Arthur Ashe celebrates after winning the Wimbledon men’s singles title in 1975.

(Associated Press)

Ashe, who contracted HIV from a blood transfusion he received during heart-bypass surgery, died in 1993. Although he was four years older than Smith, the two developed a close friendship when they traveled the globe as Davis Cup teammates and rising professionals.

Smith has vivid memories of traveling with him, Ashe in his “Citizen of the World” T-shirt with his nose forever buried in a newspaper or magazine. Smith was ranked No. 1 in the U.S. at the time, two spots ahead of his pal, yet the wildly popular Ashe always got top billing.

“When we went to Africa, I was the other guy who played against him in all these exhibitions,” Smith told The Times in 2018. “They would introduce him as Arthur Ashe, No. 1 player in the U.S., No. 1 in the world, one of the greatest players to ever play the game … and Stan Smith, his opponent.”

Smith laughs about that now, but it used to chafe him. Finally, he raised the issue with his buddy.

Recalled Smith in that 2018 interview: “Arthur came up to me and said, ‘I’m sorry about that. If we do a tour of Alabama, I’ll carry your rackets for you.’ He was in tune with everything.

“Arthur was a quiet leader walking a tightrope between a traditionally white sport and the black community.”

Smith will be at Wimbledon next month, where his UCLA friend will be honored.

As for his shoes, they’re everywhere, and have been since the 1970s. Adidas originally developed the shoe for French player Robert Haillet in the mid-1960s, and the sneakers were known as the “Haillet.”

• Share via Close extra sharing options

Tennis great Stan Smith talks about some of the ideas he hopes his new book will convey to readers.

In 1972, the company switched to Smith, naming the shoes in his honor and printing a tiny picture of his mustachioed face on them. There were subtle changes to the Haillet, including a notch in the tongue for laces to pass through and a heel better shaped to protect the Achilles tendon.

They sold like crazy. In 1988, Stan Smiths made the “Guinness Book of World Records” for the most pairs sold at 22 million. Yet that was only the beginning as sales surged with the release of the Stan Smith II and retro Stan Smith 80s. The most common ones were solid white with touch of green on the back.

“Hugh Grant turned around last year in the [Wimbledon] royal box and said, `First girl I ever kissed, I was wearing your shoes,’” Smith told The Times in 2022. “Another guy said he met this girl when he was wearing my shoes. It was so meaningful that they both wore the shoes for their wedding seven years later.

“It started off as a tennis shoe. Now it’s a fashion shoe.”

Tennis great Stan Smith with his namesake Adidas shoe.

(Sam Farmer / Los Angeles Times)

Smith’s personal collection has climbed to more than 100 size 13s in all sorts of colors, including his favorite pair in cardinal and black, an homage to his USC roots.

In 2022, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Smith’s Wimbledon singles title, Adidas gave all of its sponsored players a pair of shoes with SW19 on the tongue — Wimbledon’s postcode — with the date of that match against Ilie Nastase inside the right shoe and the score of the match inside the left.

At Wimbledon this year, the spotlight swings to the other side of Los Angeles, to an unforgettable Bruin, a sports hero who impacted so many lives.

For Smith, his friendship with Ashe was an early example in his career of a relationship forged with trust.

The book, incidentally, is affixed with a unique and fitting page marker.

A shoelace.

While PE is a mandatory subject in schools, the recommended amount of two hours a week is not enforced.

YST chief executive Ali Oliver said: “Our children are moving less, feeling unhappier, and losing access to the transformative power of PE, contributing to stagnant physical activity levels.

“The fall in PE hours is sadly an exacerbation of a longer-term trend and should be a wake-up call to society, from policymakers to schools and parents.

“Unless we take action to reverse these damaging trends and increase activity levels to improve wellbeing, we risk failing a generation.”

In a statement, the government said: “These figures highlight the government’s dire inheritance, but we’re determined to break down barriers to accessing PE and school sports for young people through our Plan for Change, helping to improve their mental and physical wellbeing.

“We are working across the government and with our partners including Youth Sport Trust and Sport England to boost participation and have already invested £100m to upgrade sports facilities and launched a programme to improve access to sports for pupils with special education needs and disabilities.

“Our ongoing curriculum and assessment review seeks to deliver a broader curriculum, so that children do not miss out on subjects including PE and sport.”

Jordan Thomas didn’t want to just research and write about fire, he wanted to see it up close, and he has turned that experience into the exceptional new book, “When It All Burns.” A specialist in the cultural forces that shape fire, Thomas joined the Los Padres Hotshots, a crew that might be viewed as the Navy SEALs of firefighting. He spent 2021 battling wildfires extreme and treacherous even by the standards of these globally warmed times.

A first-person account would be compelling enough, especially given Thomas’ gift for terse, layered expository writing. But Thomas has more on his mind here. He alternates sequences of harrowing action and macho team-building with deep dives into the ecology, science, economics and, most important, Indigenous cultural practices related to fire. In Thomas’ hands these subjects are interconnected, and his writing brings new heat to an ubiquitous subject.

If you live anywhere near Los Angeles, you may very well prefer not to read “When It All Burns.” But you should. Just this last January, a series of wildfires ravaged the region, fed by gusting Santa Ana winds, drought conditions and low humidity. Projected damage from the fires had ballooned to more than $250 billion in damages in January, The Times reported. At least 30 people were killed in the fires, with economic ramifications expected to stretch into the unforeseeable future. “When It All Burns” was written well before any of this happened, and it sometimes carries the force of prophecy. The fire next time has already burned, though there will surely be more.

Thomas sets the table early on: “In the past two decades, wildfires have been doing things not even computer models can predict, environmental events that have scientists racking their brains for appropriately Dystopian technology: firenados, gigafires, megafires. Scientists recently invented the term ‘megafire’ to describe wildfires that behave in ways that would have been impossible just a generation ago, burning through winter, exploding in the night, and devastating landscapes historically impervious to incendiary destruction.”

In other words, it’s only going to get worse. As a member of the Hotshots crew, Thomas hacked away at undergrowth with a chainsaw as the firefighters made their advance, and he found himself fascinated by the subculture of people, mostly men, assigned to combat these otherworldly infernos. But the education and knowledge he carries also makes him deeply ambivalent about the very nature of fire suppression.

Author Jordan Thomas.

(Sari Blum)

For centuries, Indigenous peoples the world over have used controlled fires, or “cultural burning,” for any number of purposes, from agriculture to reducing the risk of uncontrolled fires. But such practices didn’t jibe with increasingly modern economies, and colonialists, especially in North America, saw burning as both barbaric and a threat to industrialized capitalism. Fire surpression was more than a byproduct of Native American genocide, it was part of the master plan: “In California, fire had always connected people to their food, and Americans set about its suppression with unprecedented brutality.” Researchers who tried to bring this history to light often had their work suppressed like one more controlled fire. And as the practice declined, wildfires entered the breach.

As you might expect, life as a Hotshot is fraught with medical risk: Hotshots tend to work sick and injured, loathe to pass up the overtime and hazard pay on which they depend. As Thomas writes, “The precarious lives of Hotshots are one flashpoint in an expanding field of self-reinforcing social and environmental crises. Scientists call this a sacrifice zone — a place where low-income people shoulder the burden of industrial misconduct.”

Every time “When It All Burns” threatens to get dry, like a combustible piece of brush, Thomas brings it back to his own firefighting travails, and the cast of Hotshot characters who showed him the ropes, berated him and bailed him out.

The two Los Padres leaders are Edgar, a stern drill sergeant-type who rides everyone with equal venom, and Aoki, just as demanding but with more of a shaman-warrior demeanor. Aoki conducts Thomas’ job interview as the two men hike a steep hill; Thomas eventually has to decide between asking questions, which takes up oxygen, or concentrating on the task at hand.

“At a certain level of physical suffering, the pain becomes almost comedic,” he notes, as he assesses his condition before hiking a mountain to carry an injured firefighter back downhill. “My feet were torn and oozing within my elk leather boots, and every inch of my skin was a rash of poison oak. Hours before I had been incapacitated by muscle cramps.” And moments later: “The only antidote to the discomfort was to return to the level of exhaustion where the body becomes numb.”

“When It All Burns” is one of those books that immerses the reader in the nuances of a world most of us know only through the lens of tragedy and destruction. Thomas’ visceral, crystalline prose only adds fuel to the fire.

Vognar is a freelance culture writer.

PARENTS know all too well that keeping kids entertained over the summer holidays can be pricey.

The cost of childcare alone can cost around £1,039 for the six weeks of the break, and that is not to mention days out and other activities.

1

And many activity camps for children can be costly too, but that does not mean your child has to miss out.

There are loads of free classes available for families across countless areas in the UK.

Below we round up the best classes for kids this summer that cost nothing at all.

FREE FOOTBALL COACHING

McDonald’s runs free football classes for children aged 5 to 11 years old.

The programme lasts for 10 weeks and usually runs for an hour.

The event is hosted at local stadiums across the UK.

The sessions, which are open to all abilities, are running from March to July.

They are delivered by FA-qualified coaches at more than 1,600 locations nationwide.

You can find out more by visiting www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/football/fun-football-centres.

FREE COURSES FOR TEENAGERS

Islington Council runs a number of free courses for teenagers and young adults through its Summerversity scheme.

In the past, classes have included archery, football camp and photography lessons.

You can book a maximum of eight courses to keep your teenager entertained over the holidays.

You can sign up by visiting www.summerversity.co.uk/

Of course you will need to live in the London borough to get access to the scheme.

But if you don’t it may be worth ringing up your local council to see if it runs a similar event.

FREE BOXING CAMP

Sporting Aid in Waltham is running a free boxing camp for those aged 10-16.

The event is run every Saturday at 12:00pm at the Waltham Cross Playing Fields Car Park.

No prior experience is required so it may be a great way for your little one to be introduced to the sport.

You can sign up for the event by visiting www.eventbrite.co.uk.

FREE SUMMER CAMP

Music charity Vache Baroque runs a completely free summer camp for children in St Giles.

The event runs from  Monday 18 – Friday August 22 and includes a hot meal. It is for children aged 9–14.

Children will participate in a number of activities including singing, arts and crafts and circus skills

They can also take part in an optional performance with professional orchestra in its summer circus-opera on Sunday September 7.

You can find out more by visiting, vachebaroque.com.